Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)

This is an important debate. I share many of the sentiments expressed in the worthy statements of my colleagues, Deputies Shortall and Kathleen Lynch, to which I listened carefully.

There is a Victorian attitude to social welfare in this country, and that has been the case for many years. More money is spent on pursuing and supervising people to ensure that they do not work rather than on focusing efforts to ensure people get work and to provide adequate training in technological skills, construction and other trades so that people can get work. We must get rid of the Victorian attitude that is prevalent within Departments.

The Department of Social and Family Affairs is an excellent Department. The Minister's senior official, who is present, is an old sparring partner of mine for the past five years. He probably thought he had seen the last of me today but I have come back to haunt him. I acknowledge that he and other officials have been helpful to me since becoming spokesman for social and family affairs. The same is true of people working in offices throughout the country. They are only implementing the law and no blame to them for that. We need to change the law.

There is too much centralisation. One related example is from the health service. Medical card assessments is one area that could be transferred from the Department of Health and Children to the Department of Social and Family Affairs. They should be done locally. Those assessments are centralised now in Finglas in Deputy Shortall's constituency. However, people knew the circumstances in Mullingar, Athlone, Longford or wherever else. Community welfare officers, CWOs, knew the circumstances and with a quick visit could assess or analyse a person's priority for a medical card. Persons with cancer or other diseases should be sure they will get a medical card. Medical cards should be automatic for anybody suffering from cancer. Such people should not have to go through the additional burden or trauma of having to be assessed. I have always held that view and, if in Government, I would like to see such a scheme implemented.

I do not understand why services are centralised and taken away from the very people who have the expertise and who have dealt with people through the years. Decentralisation was supposed to be Government policy but it has been abandoned for medical card assessments. Now assessments will take months and people will have to wait a long time for an outcome. No expedition will be achieved. I do not see where the cost savings will occur as a result of centralising the assessment process. That is something the Minister can bring back for consideration.

I fought vehemently the attempt to subsume CWOs within the Department of Social and Family Affairs. I note the regulation has not been enforced yet, but it should be thrown in the dustbin. CWOs have discretion and once they are subsumed within the Department they will be strangled with bureaucracy and red tape. They will not be in a position to make decisions. We often contact CWOs at weekends to ensure that those people who are less fortunate than ourselves and who are in need of temporary accommodation or money to secure the basic necessities for their families are looked after. Subsuming CWOs into the Department of Social and Family Affairs will do away with the very ethos that led the late Frank Cluskey to introduce the discretionary payment scheme, which is extremely important in this context. I hope in this difficult time for her that the Minister will throw that regulation into the bin and never take it out again.

The Minister indicated she wants an 8% reduction in the rent supplement. Most tenants have legal agreements with their landlords. Whatever about prospective tenants dealing with landlords, how are we going to protect existing tenants? Many of them are in a vulnerable position, suffer illnesses or are barely literate. Illiteracy is a big problem in this country and one has to be on the ground to realise that. What will happen to a person who may not be in a position to renegotiate? The landlord can say "Get lost Willie. You made your agreement and you are bound by its terms and conditions". What will happen when a person is told to get lost and they are put out? What body will undertake to ensure that people will be secure in their accommodation? How will the Minister provide security for them? An additional 1,000 rental accommodation scheme, RAS, places are no use. We would be building houses and providing employment for people. That was always a fundamental Labour Party ethos and policy. We would build houses and give labour-intensive employment and ensure social houses would be available to people rather than filling the pockets of landlords.

Cutting the dole is all very well for people under 20 if they have somewhere to go such as college or access to one of the schemes we advocated such as bridging the gap, the back to education allowance and the back to work allowance. We advocated that the qualifying periods for those schemes should be reduced. It would be great to enhance the eligibility for community employment schemes but what will happen if the young people do not have a place to go? Who will look after them? What does a 19-year old do with €100 if he or she has nowhere to go? It is very fine in theory and it would be laudable if ancillary services were available and people could seek the necessary retraining and skills to ensure they would get a job.

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